Daily posts from a retired public school teacher who is just looking at the data.

Three over coffee.

Saturday morning across the Big Lake is beautiful. The huge storm that came at us last night has moved east. All evening reports of tornado warnings scrolled along the bottom of the TV as we listened to Obama give a funny speech on CSPAN to the TV and Radio reporters. But there were so many weather related scrolls, maps and warnings on the screen that you could barely see Obama.

On the other hand, it should mean something that the most entertaining thing on TV on a Friday night is the president speaking at a dinner. We had thought about going to the local tavern to hear a band called The Usuals. But given the weather and the fact that they didn’t start until 11PM made us think twice, even if 11PM here is 10PM on our Chicago time watches.

Dodging the downpours, teachers protest the Arne in Chicago.

PURE reports that 45 teachers and parents protested outside the Hyatt yesterday morning. Inside was the Arne Duncan hawking his charters and turnarounds to an Advance Illinois breakfast. AI is headed by Republican former governor Jim Edgar and Da Mayor-in-law Bill Daley.

Arne repeated his whopper about North Lawndale College Prep’s graduation rate (claiming it to be 97% when it is really 46%), and he did it during the Q and A session when the school’s co-founder, AI executive director Robin Steans, was standing right next to him. So, we don’t have enough good models, and we have to lie about the ones we promote as good models. But it sounds as though Arne wants quantity and not quality when it comes to turnarounds and charters.

They are fools and thieves in Springfield. They hurt real people.

The Southtown Star’s Phil Kadner reports on Beverly Kowatch, 73 of Tinley Park. Her daughter is blind, developmentally disabled and living in a special home run by a social service agency.

There’s no way Kowatch is going to be able to deal with her daughter at home.Then again, the state may not follow through on its doomsday budget cuts.It could operate on that six month budget for the next few months without a tax hike.If that turns out to be the case, the governor has caused millions of people throughout this state to needlessly fear the worst. All I know for sure is that the Democrats could have avoided this mess by passing a real budget this spring. They didn’t. So now the political games are running in overdrive.Whatever happens, Kowatch is a victim. She’s really worried about how she’s going to care for her daughter. And then I realize I’m reacting like an elected official. These people are really hurting. Someone ought to make that clear to the politicians.

City Hall approves Congress Hotel expansion, screwing hotel employees who have been on strike for six years.

Solidifying his anti-union cred, Da Mayor’s Plan Commission approved a $20 million hotel expansion at the Congress where Unite-Here union members have been on a historic six year strike.

Ald. Rick Munoz (22nds Ward) has reintroduced legislation in the City Council that would require hotels to notify potential guests of a strike. “It’s really a consumer protection bill,” he tells us. “When I travel … I don’t want to cross a picket line, and I think people should be informed if one exists.” Munoz is working with members of the Finance committee to set a hearing date for his bill, which has already attracted 42 co-sponsors. Strassel tells us the union won’t back down from their campaign, either. “The city has a question to answer about how to deal with hotels in the coming months,” says Strasell. “We will be there every step of the way.

“I continue to personally and professionally believe that to administer PARCC this year is absolutely not in the best interest of our students." -- Byrd-BennettRahm Emanuel looked befuddled as he hemmed and hawed last Thursday when Phil Ponce asked him straight-up -- Should CPS administer the PARCC test? I knew then that despite Byrd-Bennett's prot […]

- Fred Klonsky, SORE President The Illinois Education Association was founded in 1853. It became an affiliate of the National Education Association in 1857. In 1966 the NEA and the African American American Teachers Association merged. We also merged in Illinois. The NEA essentially removed administrators from leadership and became a union in 1970. Over the […]

“…Aside from the obvious fact that the possible existence of redundancy in other contexts does not mean that a redundancy was intended here, the defendants' argument overlooks the fact that ‘diminished or impaired’ is phrased in the disjunctive, unlike all of the examples of redundancies that the defendants provide. ‘As used in its ordinary sense, the w […]

Rep. Elaine Nekritz: The Audacity of…(well, …the audacity)Falling snow, polar vortices, unending darkness, and listening to Representative Elaine Nekritz on the radio defending the indefensible…this truly is the winter of my discontent.On the other hand, legal teams representing the public sector workers are providing opening arguments before the Illinois Su […]

Tomorrow is the first day of PARCC out where I work. How's it going to go?I have no clue. We've never once successfully logged a grade level onto the Infrastructure Trial. Maybe 40% of a grade level.I've done little else for six weeks. In a way, PARCC has been good for me because I've learned so much about UNIX and working in the terminal […]

PEORIA, IL -- Three candidate forums sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Greater Peoria are are scheduled for next week, for candidates in the April 7 municipal elections. The first is on March 7, for candidates for the...

I keep getting a lot of email from UFT about how March 9th is a "week of action." We're going to wear a special color, or hold hands at our school, and take a photo. I don't mind cooperating. It's not a whole lot to ask. I'm not completely sure, though, that it will accomplish much.More to the point, if next week is a week of ac […]

The resistance to the PARCC -- the new, standardized, computerized tests being administered in New Jersey beginning this month -- continues to grow. Parents, teachers, and students are rightly concerned that these tests are taking too much time, are unnecessarily complex and confusing, disadvantage students with less access to technology, and narrow the curr […]

Did you know the New York City Department of Education still grants study sabbaticals? Well, they do. I took one last year. I know two people on them this year. And the application for next year has been posted, and is due in just a few weeks. Here’s the DoE’s sabbatical page (very little explanation): […]

Carol Burris has been an outspoken critic of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s baseless attacks on New York state’s educators. He is outraged that the current evaluation system rated 99% of the state’s teachers effective or highly effective. What he forgets, Burris reminds us, is that this is not an antiquated system: the current method of evaluation […]

Who will be the next superintendent of the Boston Public Schools (and who really gets to decide???) It’s a bird. No–it’s a plane. No–it’s actually snow. Why it’s snowing men, reader! Four men to be precise, each of whom longs to lead the Boston Public Schools. But first these *he’s* must make their way through […]

Last month I wrote about an attempt in Anaheim, CA to privatize the management of another public school, using the so-called Parent Trigger law.The law, which turns parent against parent in a community, gives a temporary majority, who are willing (often cajoled) to sign a petition, the power to hand their public school over to a private company. That company […]